


How to Save a Life

by Rebness



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen, I'm Sorry, Post-Felina, jesse bb are u ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:24:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1406437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebness/pseuds/Rebness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four ways it might have ended for Jesse without Mr. White's interference -- and one way it was supposed to end and didn't. </p><p>Warning: violence and character death</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Save a Life

  
1\. **It's basic chemistry**

  
He doesn't even have time to say anything except a breathy, 'Oh, fuck!' when it happens. Emilio is thrown into him by the force of the blast, as the white phosphorus ignites and tears through the small room. The pain is searing, brief, a shock to the senses. He is an artist, not a scientist, and though he appreciates the raw destructive beauty of this, he dies without the faintest clue about what happened.

 

2\. **You'll be dead within a week**

  
A dusty ceiling fan whirs overhead, barely stirring the stifling summer heat. He hates the murky motel room, but the clerk at La Quinta had cast one horrified look at him and Jane before they'd announced that, regretfully, the hotel was fully booked. 

And so they'd been directed to this dive of a motel where it had taken all of five minutes to score some drugs right there in the hallway, and he'd said that maybe they should try somewhere else, but Jane had pointed out that it was nearly midnight and anyway, they needed to be near to LAX so they could march right up to the ticket desk and get their tickets to New Zealand the next day. 

That had been several weeks ago. 

Jesse knows they'll go tomorrow, though. They just have to get cleaned up, have an early night, get their tickets. It's important that they get on the flight soon. The money is dwindling fast and even though Jane has scolded him about being generous with their new-found friends in the hallway, they still have the cash for more of the good stuff that night.

  
He's quiet as he watches Jane prepare everything, his eyes fixated on the flame from the lighter as the liquid in the spoon bubbles away. Then there's the belt around his arm, Jane finding the vein there with practiced ease.  
  
Just one last time.

  
He waits for the familiar taste in his mouth, but it doesn't come. There's a rush of an intensity he has never known before, a thousand times better than ever, and he slumps against the bed. 

His heart lurches painfully. He flexes his fingers and his toes, grimacing as they begin to tingle, then burn. It feels as if fire is ignited at his extremities and is sent churning through his veins, liquid fire burning up his spine and ricocheting across his exhausted body, bursting into a kalaeidoscope of colour and light against his eyes.

  
Jane is at his side, pushing against him, saying something. He strains to catch what she is saying. He opens his mouth to tell her he can't hear her; there's something wrong in his very blood. Her eyes are huge, staring at him in horror, her mouth open in a perfect silent scream, and before he can find the words to say everything he wants, darkness falls over him. 

 

3\. **There's no way I can explain it to you**

  
He breaks into a run across the empty lot, the meth giving him the courage and determination to enter a fight he knows he'll lose. He pulls the gun out of his jacket and fires the first bullet, which goes careening off into the night. He fires a second, a third time, and he doesn't even know if they hit either of the child-murdering bald fucks.

  
The air is rent apart by the sound of gunfire, and he feels the agonising painful protest in his side, in his shoulder, his throat. He fires again, slumps to the floor as his legs give way. There's the sound of another bullet, and blood spurts up his throat and over his lips and he doesn't care, it was the right thing to do. He hopes Mr. White never forgives himself, for forcing him into doing this, for trusting Gustavo Fring. He hopes Fring sees himself for the worthless man he is, allowing the death of a child and thinking nobody would avenge him.

  
It was the right thing to do. 

 

4\. **This pain in my heart**

 

'Christ, look at the state of him.'  There's mild disgust in the voice of the man who takes his left arm.

Todd is defensive. 'I was just tryin' to get him to listen, is all--' 

'Think you've gone too far this time, Todd,' says the man who takes his other arm. They haul him up, drag him across the ground. He passes out as he's carried from the shed where he's displeased Todd yet again and paid the price in blood, yet again, and wakes up on the filthy mattress in the hole where he has spent countless nights.

  
He groans and clutches at the mattress, listening to their voices fade as they walk away. He calls after them, weakly. He doesn't want to be alone. There's blood on the mattress. He can taste blood in his mouth, his ears are ringing; his head is heavy. This can't be it. _This can't be it_! 

He attempts to raise his head, but the effort exhausts him and he falls back against the mattress. He's tired, just so tired, and though his heart is hammering in his chest, though his young body struggles to recover from this latest onslaught and though his mind screams to him:

  
 _Stay awake_! _Stay awake_!

  
He can't manage it.

  
Can it really be so bad? Hasn't he wanted his body to just _give up_ , hasn't he hated it for dragging him through each day, stubbornly clinging to life? He's been a stinking, shuffling shell of a man for countless months and he's prayed for the release of death for so long. Why not just _let go_?

  
He doesn't know how long passes as the cold night air sets in and someone above silently pulls the tarp across the grate, blocking out the light of the stars. He's going to die alone, he knows that now. He passes in and out of consciousness; his limbs feel like lead. He couldn't cry out if he wanted to. 

  
Only the briefest thought of his mother flashes across his mind. He'll be buried out in the desert, and they'll never know. They'll think he's overdosed in some room somewhere, or he's been killed by some dealer over a turf war. They'll never know that he died clean, lonely, that he's sorry for everything, for Gale and Jane and Jake. They'll never know that he would have said goodbye if only he'd been allowed. 

 

 **Epilogue:** **I want this**  
  
  
  
The air is bitterly cold in Oregon at this time in the morning. The Greyhound bus has stopped for a 40 minute break before the onward journey to Pendleton, but he's back in his seat after a quick cigarette, his teeth chattering. He pulls the coat tight around his body; a kindly older woman gave him it back in Colorado when she'd seen the state of him, and the brief kindess which had punctuated months of cold indifference at the hands of his captors caused him to weep.  
  
Well, it wasn't the first kindness. There had been that--  
  
He scowls.  It was probably all part of some masterplan in which he was the pawn. He stares out of the window at the station, watching a man helping his young son onto a bus opposite.  
  
 _But the asshole died_ , he tells himself. _He got shot holding me down_. It wasn't about the money; he hadn't even let Jack finish his sentence. The asshole had saved his life, as he had before, when they'd been partners instead of enemies. Mr. White hadn't even ended it when he could have just taken back the money and hushed Jesse and Jane up for good  -- when she--  
  
Jesse swallows, tears gathering in his eyes. _Don't think of her._ But the hate burns within him once again, and he's baffled and angry because none of it makes sense to him, Mr. White's apology in the lab that time they were chasing that stupid goddamn fly and then the awful, awful moment when -- he closes his eyes, wills himself to stop that train of thought. It does him no good, and those nights when he obsessed over that question at the compound were amongst the worst. 

So he returns to the other question, the one which obsesses him now: _The asshole saved my life. Why_?

  
And what the hell had that nod meant, anyway? Why had he returned it? It had seemed so right at the time, and he'd understood what Mr. White had been saying to him in that moment, but now whenever he thinks on it, he can't quite grasp what Mr. White had been saying, or what he himself had been saying in return. He's pondered _why_ for the last few days. He suspects he'll be wondering about it for some time to come.  
  
The driver returns to the bus, along with a few passengers. Jesse glances at them briefly, willing himself not to panic. He's ditched the car, he's clean-shaven, he wills himself to be unremarkable. He's read the newspapers, with the stories of the machine gun, the lab, the utter destruction and evidence of some hapless bastard being kept prisoner there. His own name is barely mentioned, but that doesn't mean the DEA aren't looking for him.

  
The bus shudders to a start and peels away from the station, back onto the open road. He doesn't quite know how he'll cross the border, if he decides to cross the border -- but despite everything -- _because_ of everything, the journey goes on.  
  



End file.
